Jul 3, 2026 · 54m · more-or-less
Every CTO Is Quietly Switching Off Anthropic and OpenAI | GLM 5.2, Vox Americanus, Claude Fable 5 · More or Less Podcast
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In this episode of the 'More or Less' podcast, hosts Brit Morin, Jessica Lessin, Sam Lessin, and Dave Morin analyze major shifts in enterprise AI adoption, digital identity verification through Vox Americanus, tech subculture, and the future of governance.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.1 Guest teaching 3.8 Guest disagreement 3.4 The hosts pushing back 3.8
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 48:35 Jessica dismisses the framing of Taylor Swift as a helpless media victim
Jessica adamantly shuts down Dave and Brit's suggestion that the pop star has no choice, arguing Swift is an intentional narrative mastermind orchestrating the spectacle.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 33:44 Jessica refuses the Silicon Valley vibe coding mandateJessica directly challenges the panel's hype around agentic workflows, firmly stating she will play the normie and that ordinary professionals do not need to code all day.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 41:20 Dave details the open-source parity of GLM 5.2 over closed modelsDave delivers detailed insider insights on how Chinese open-source trillion-parameter model GLM 5.2 enables incubator founders and CTOs to drop Opus 4.8 without noticeable loss in capability.
The host holds their own ▶ 5:21 Sam deconstructs elite sports signalingSam counters Jessica's breathless hype about padel clubs by systematically laying out how VCs create exclusive racquet sports solely to avoid mixing with pickleball hobbyists.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Podcast Animated Opening Title Sequence | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | The conversation opens with casual banter regarding VC summer habits and e-foiling. Sam explains why e-foils fail to sustain long-term engagement as riders quickly outgrow them for natural foils, while the others lightly chime in. | |
| The Rise of Padel and Elitism in Tech Sports | 5 | 4 | 4 | 4 | Jessica highlights The Information's upcoming feature on the rise of padel among elite venture capitalists. Sam cynically breaks down the sports hierarchy as a manufactured elitist sorting mechanism to avoid pickleball 'plebs', prompting light mocking and pushback from Dave. | |
| Vox Americanus, Digital Identity, and Political Infrastructure | 6 | 5 | 4 | 5 | Sam introduces Vox Americanus, an app verifying American identity to curb bots and elevate political dialogue. The group debates distribution hurdles, platform incentives, and Sam's reluctance to run for political office unless operational misery is abstracted away. | |
| Agentic AI, Vibe Coding, and Hiring for Cultural Fit | 5 | 3 | 5 | 5 | Dave and Sam extol the rapid empowerment of non-technical builders through agentic workflows. Jessica pushes back against the tech-evangelist consensus, refusing the assertion that every professional must become a vibe coder. | |
| Anthropic's Claude Fable 5, AI Politics, and GLM 5.2 Model Adoption | 8 | 6 | 3 | 4 | The hosts dissect the theater of model safety deals and enterprise AI capex. Dave and Sam demonstrate deep domain expertise analyzing how Zhipu's GLM 5.2 enables enterprise CTOs to switch away from expensive frontier models like Opus to open-source inference on owned hardware. | |
| Pop Culture Discussion: Taylor Swift's Media Circus | 4 | 3 | 6 | 6 | Discussing rumor of Taylor Swift's wedding, Dave and Brit suggest media circus dynamics are out of Swift's control. Jessica forcefully counters, asserting Swift is an obsessive narrative mastermind who actively chooses the publicity. | |
| Evaluating AI-Powered Education at Alpha School | 6 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Brit shares first-hand empirical observations from sending her children to Alpha Camp. She provides a nuanced critique, endorsing the adaptive learning model for neurodivergent focus while warning against hyper-monitored dashboard parenting. | |
| America's Future, Longevity, and Technological Evolution | 4 | 3 | 2 | 3 | The quartet wraps up with Fourth of July reflections on America's Semiquincentennial, longevity prospects, and satirical social media memes depicting future robot liberation civil wars. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Brit Morin: There is no 'VC summer' slowdown in AI right now
“I don't think in AI there's VC summer. I don't have a VC summer right now.”
Lessin: Padel is a great sport for socializing with the ultra-rich
“If you wanna hang out with really rich people, this is a great sport to learn.”
Lessin: ID Verification APIs Like Stripe and Persona Are Shockingly Robust
“The big delta from today versus even a few years ago is it's shockingly easy to validate IDs, right? The APIs are now really robust for it. There's Persona, there's Stripe.”
Lessin: Political Candidates in 2026 Must Already Have a Media Footprint
“In twenty-twenty six, you can't take someone who's like the nice guy liked in the community and build a media strategy for them. You need them to already have like a media footprint themselves.”
Morin: Verified platform Vox Americanus would be deeply healthy for society
“I actually want to participate in Vox Americana at scale, without question. I think it would be deeply healthy for the American populace and for society.”
Lessin: A verified national internet would be far more moderate than Twitter
“That if you truly had the American internet or, like, the French internet, this can be global in various ways, it is so much more moderate than what you get on Twitter, right? Like, it would, like, it would be so much more moderate”
Lessin: Vox Americanus was built in days by emailing an AI coding bot
“It actually is pretty freaking good, and, like, the fact that I could, like, Build that in a few days, but like honestly on boats, like texting my, or emailing my bot for changes is like pretty sweet.”
Brit Morin: Cultural fit will matter more than technical skill for engineers
“Cultural fit, I think, matters way more now than ever before, when, like, the ability to be a great engineer is, like, much easier than ever before. And so it's, like, teaching these people how to be human, maybe a little throwback to etiquette school, but als…”
Dave Morin: Engineers now prompt models rather than writing compiler languages
“You no longer have to speak a language that a compiler has to understand. Now you just have to be able to speak a language that the models can understand, and the models go speak compiler, and the compiler speaks to the assembler speaks machine language, and l…”
Jessica Lessin: Society is not heading toward everyone needing to vibe code
“I don't believe we are all headed for a future where we all need to be vibe coders.”
Developers are quietly replacing Claude Opus 4.8 with open-source GLM 5.2
“Everyone that I've been interacting with and many people across the open clock community are switching it out for Opus four dot eight and they don't notice a difference.”
Nvidia server spot rental rates are down 22 percent week-over-week
“You know, I think if you look at NVIDIA, you know, rent, spot rental on NVIDIA servers is down, like, 22% week over week the last couple of weeks. But all of the capital is shifting to, Buying actual raw metal.”